Microsoft: Missing Hotmail e-mails are back

Over the past weekend, a number of Hotmail users reported that their Hotmail messages in various folders were gone. Microsoft officials said on January 3 that the company had identified the cause of the problem and fixed it.

UPDATE from Microsoft: Beginning on December 30th we had an issue with Windows Live Hotmail that impacted 17,355 accounts. Customers impacted temporarily lost the contents of their mailbox through the course of mailbox load balancing between servers.